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If you can, start by cutting off access to devices that you don't have control or at least knowledge of, i.e., any device that hasn't been brought in for proper setup (where I work we achieve this through central static DHCP). Also, tell your boss that you cannot do your job if (a) you have no money to do it and (b) no one lets you do it by bypassing you at every opportunity.

Yes, people sharing information and thoughts freely is a terrible threat to privacy.

Straw man. He's not arguing against the act of sharing of information. Read, then understand, then formulate your counter-argument.

Oh wait, no, the other thing - they (I should say 'we' as a facebook user) deliberately share this info and WANT to make it public.

That's an assumption that doesn't hold in practice. People deliberately share information. Who they intended to share it with and who it is actually shared with are not necessarily the same. A Facebook user may not realize the implications of posting something to a public page or a public profile, and in the process share more about themselves or their actions than they intended.
You also fail to realize that the "big-brother fetish" is in fact a legitimate concern. Think about location check-ins. If someone else checks you in, Facebook now knows where you were. Did you want it to know that? Did you know that you can disable others' ability to check you in? Did you know that that gives Facebook one more piece of data to target advertising towards you? Maybe you do...but it's unreasonable of you to expect the masses to know all of the possible ways a simple click on Facebook can be used against you.

An anonymous reader writes "There's good news in the search for the next generation of semiconductors. Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have successfully integrated ultra-thin layers of the semiconductor indium arsenide onto a silicon substrate to create a nanoscale transistor with excellent electronic properties (abstract). A member of the III–V family of semiconductors, indium arsenide offers several advantages as an alternative to silicon, including superior electron mobility and velocity, which makes it an outstanding candidate for future high-speed, low-power electronic devices."

hype7 writes "Given the recentpublicity about Android and Google, the Harvard Business Review are offering another interesting perspective. They argue that Google runs a serious risk of losing control of Android, as competitors such as Bing and Baidu move in. It certainly presents an interesting possibility — that Android could win but Google wouldn't see any benefit out of it."

An anonymous reader writes "Carl Zimmer's latest foray into neuroscience examines why the brain can get jammed up by a simple math problem: 'Its trillions of connections let it carry out all sorts of sophisticated computations in very little time. You can scan a crowded lobby and pick out a familiar face in a fraction of a second, a task that pushes even today's best computers to their limit. Yet multiplying 357 by 289, a task that demands a puny amount of processing, leaves most of us struggling.' Some scientists think mental tasks can get stuck in bottlenecks because everything has to go through a certain neural network they call 'the router.'"

schliz writes "Researchers have devised a theoretical quantum computer that could function even if one in four qubits were missing. The design is claimed to be the first that tolerates both qubit loss and decoherance to this extent. It performs calculations by measuring, rather than manipulating qubits, so there are fewer points of failure."

itwbennett writes "US Attorney General Eric Holder is visiting Beijing this week to discuss how China and the US can better coordinate efforts to stop intellectual property rights violations. 'One of the things that has happened in recent years is that counterfeiting has become a globalized industry,' said Christian Murck, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. To effectively shut down these operations, cross-country efforts at strengthening global enforcement like Holder's visit to China are crucial, he added. Coinciding with Holder's visit, China announced it will launch a new national campaign to crack down on intellectual property rights violations. The campaign will take aim at the production and distribution of pirated goods such as DVDs and software products. Violations relating to registered trademarks and patents will also be targeted. The campaign will last for half a year. The commercial value of pirated software in China, at $7.5 billion, is second only to that in the US, where it is $8.3 billion, according to the Business Software Alliance and IDC."

Hugh Pickens writes "In a report sure to raise eyebrows, CNN Money claims that despite a very vocal group of detractors, the vast majority of iPhone users love AT&T. A survey released this week by Yankee Group reports that 73% of iPhone owners scored their satisfaction with the carrier as an 8, 9, or 10 on a 10-point scale. The results seem surprising, given the pounding AT&T has taken in the media and on the blogosphere about its service-related issues with the iPhone and AT&T's recent iPad-related security glitch. For its part, AT&T says its network really isn't as bad as many people think. 'There's a gap between what people hear about us and what their experience is with us. We think that gap is beginning to close,' says Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman. 'It doesn't mean we're perfect; we still have work to do. But that's no surprise to us, because we have a great network.'" Buried in the penultimate paragraph is the somewhat alarming note that "77% of iPhone owners say they'll buy another iPhone, compared to 20% of Android customers who say they'll buy another Android phone."

leathered writes "Tinfoil hatters around the world are abuzz that UVB-76, the Russian shortwave radio station that has been broadcasting its monotonous tone almost uninterrupted since 1982, has suddenly gone offline. Of course no one knows what the significance of this is, but best brush up on your drills just in case."